Biology Matters, After All!
We’ve got a gender-bending soap opera well underway in the Granite State. Our socially progressive Republican Governor signed a bill into law over the summer (HB1205) separating school sports biologically as Title IX intended but vetoed a companion bill that would have secured girls’ and women’s safe spaces. Together, they’d have said, yeah, we think this matters (really matters), and even one young lady at risk is one too many.
You can listen to this article here.
The women’s safe spaces bill got the boot, and HB1205 was challenged in court just in time for the fall High School Sports Season (as some observers knew it would). Two trans-identifying students [whose parent(s) sued] were given an exception to play with and against girls, but only them—no one else. HB1205’s restrictions were otherwise in force … or not.
Kearsage School District blinked. A tall male student claiming to be a girl was permitted to play on their girls’ varsity soccer team. No one knew that, not really, but when some parents peacefully protested in support of biological girls in the town of Bow, what happened went national. They were removed and banned for wearing pink wristbands with XX drawn on them. The game was stopped; they were singled out, intimidated, harassed, and removed.
The lawsuit they filed in response could cost the taxpayers in Bow a pretty penny.
But more importantly, the transgender cat was out of the bag. Riley Gaines was talking and tweeting about it. The story got picked up across the webby wide world, with one commenter noting that the boy from Kearsage playing as a girl went by the name Maelle (Male) Jaques (jocks). You can’t make that stuff up, right?
By the way, Maelle is also the High School “girls” NH State High Jumping Champ (State Div II); I kid you not.
Locally, parents and girls’ soccer teams became aware of the Jaques situation. A student was being allowed to play in violation of state law. I do not blame the student. I blame the district and the state for refusing to follow the law, but that has not been without consequence.
One story relayed to me by a parent involved another (Dad) at a game who insisted somewhat heatedly that boys were not naked in the girl’s locker room. I’m unsure how he knew that with such certainty, but does that also mean that any high school boy looking for a cheap thrill can hang out in the girls’ locker room, fully clothed, while fit, athletic young ladies decide if, how, when, or where to change, shower, or do whatever needs doing?
And if you are not okay with that, why does it not make you a trans bigot? How, after all, can you know how they feel at that moment?
Related: College Hack: Just Do This, Guys, And You Can Parade Naked Through Women’s Locker Rooms …
And let’s continue to ignore that it means the girls must check their interests, values, concerns, modesty, or propriety at the door because “boys don’t get naked” in the girl’s locker room. Are you listening to yourselves?
Biological fact: to be a trans-girl, you must first be a boy who can still be attracted to girls in girls’ locker rooms (insert joke about how all straight men are really lesbians). The infamous Lia Thomas was attracted to (the sort of) women with whom he coincidentally shared showers and changing spaces.
If Thomas made those women uncomfortable, it was their problem, not his, and the school and the world tried to make that the only acceptable norm.
Not everyone is taking a knee.
Meanwhile, Back in the Granite State
Several New Hampshire teams’ varsity players refused to play Kearsage in protest. One team managed to wrangle enough JV girls to lose a game, but they played. And today, a game scheduled between Kearsage and Bishop Brady was canceled. The girls chose not to play. I’d also like to think they were protesting Kearsage’s disregard for the law, but I might be reaching.
There is no punishment for breaking that law, by the way. Sorry. That’s not precisely correct.
The young women who forfeit, wondering what harm might come to them competing against a young man or subject to the gaze of his convicted child-sex-offender father (who attends all of Maelle’s games until his Dec 2nd incarceration), lose out.
They pay a price for Kearsage’s indifference and the State’s inaction, a decision they often have to make in the face of opposition from coaches and their parents.
Is there a social justicey term for that? Kids who know better than the woke grownups that might surround them?
Is it Adult?
Nitzakhon is on a little unplanned sabbatical – Memes will return when he does (though, I might take a swing or two at them, myself).
